Software and tech
/industries/software-and-tech
Engineering hiring,
without the tax.
Every engineering hire costs you engineer time. A typical loop is two interviewers per stage, three stages, plus a take-home a senior engineer might decline before they start. Picked screens by conversation, assesses with a calibrated cognitive plus role-fit task, and runs the first-round behavioural interview by AI voice. Your engineers join in the final round only if you want them to. Three finalists, on your desk, Friday.
Post an engineering role for freeSee the engineering page →
no take-homes by default·conversation-first screen·three finalists Friday
What you said, last quarter
Three things software and tech leaders told us.
Mon 08:00
"We sent a take-home to the strongest candidate of last cycle. He replied: 'I have a job. I will not spend my Saturday on this.' We lost him to a competitor who skipped it."
· VP engineering · Series B SaaS
Wed 11:45
"The hiring loop is costing us ten engineer-hours per hire. We do twenty hires a year. That is a quarter of an engineer's annual time on recruiting."
· Head of engineering · Series C developer tools
Fri 19:30
"The best engineer we hired last year had a CV that read like an intern. He could not write to impress. He could think. The CV screen missed him three times before a referral put him in front of me."
· Staff engineer · Series A AI infra
How Picked addresses each
Three answers. One pipeline.
Conversation, not assignment.
The screen is a 15-minute structured conversation. The assessment is calibrated for the role family and runs in 30 minutes, on the candidate's schedule. The first-round interview is AI voice and behavioural. The take-home is optional, you decide whether to keep it for the final round, you do not lose strong candidates at the funnel top.
↓ AI screen and assessment
Your engineers stay engineers.
Picked runs the first three stages for every role. Your engineers see three finalists with full transcripts and a score breakdown. They only join the loop for the technical round. A typical eng manager spends two hours a week on hiring, not ten.
↓ Triage to shortlist
Paper-bad, thinks-well engineers are surfaced.
The rubric scores how a candidate decomposes an unfamiliar problem, not how their CV looks. The screen probes for signal the CV does not show. Behavioural depth, not credential matching. Three engineers a quarter who would have been screened out by CV land in your shortlist instead.
↓ Decision engine
What Friday looks like
Three engineers.
On your desk.
148
engineering applicants screened, this role
9%
offers from finalists (top-3 to hire)
41h
median time post to shortlist
2.1h
median time the manager spends per role
From the beta
"We dropped the take-home as a screening tool. We kept it as a pairing exercise in the final round. Engineering hiring time per hire fell from ten engineer-hours to two. The quality of the people in the final round went up, because we stopped losing the best ones at the take-home stage."
VE
VP engineering
Series B developer tools, 80 people
Quotes paraphrased from beta sessions, May 2026. Named, consented quotes ship with V1.
For engineering teams, the alternative is:
LinkedIn Recruiter
£8k to £12k per seat per year
Outbound sourcing, not inbound. Different problem. See /vs-linkedin-recruiter.
In-house technical recruiter
£75k to £90k loaded cost per year
Plus benefits, plus quarterly bonuses, plus burn risk.
HackerRank or Codility
$250 to $1,000 per month
Assessment-only. The rest of the funnel is still yours. See /vs-hackerrank.
Picked.ai
$0.99 per AI-vetted candidate
The whole funnel. First 50 free.
Engineers in the final round, not the funnel.
Three engineers.
Friday.
Post an engineering role for freeRead the engineering page →
Engineering hiring without the engineering hiring tax · Picked.ai